Author: victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.

A New History of the Second World War

victorhanson

The New Yorker

Book Review

By

December 23, 2017

Photograph by FPG / Hulton Archive / Getty

Victor Davis Hanson’s “The Second World Wars” is not a chronological retelling of the conflict but a high-altitude, statistics-saturated overview of the dynamics and constraints that shaped it.

 In 1936, Charles Lindbergh arrived in Berlin to inspect the Luftwaffe. The visit had been arranged by Truman Smith, an ingenious intelligence officer who knew that Herman Göring, the Nazi air marshal, would find the American aviator’s celebrity irresistible; Lindbergh flew to Berlin with his wife, Anne, as his co-pilot, and then, along with Smith and another officer, spent a few days meeting German pilots, inspecting operations, and even flying several German planes. (The group also had dinner at Göring’s house, where they met his pet lion cub, Augie.) Lindbergh was impressed by what he saw; Göring so enjoyed impressing him that Smith was able to arrange four more visits over the next few years. Drawing on them, Lindbergh sent a dire warning to General Henry (Hap) Arnold, the commander of the U.S. Air Force, in 1938. “Germany is undoubtedly the most powerful nation in the world in military aviation,” he wrote, “and her margin of leadership is increasing with each month that passes.”

Continue reading “A New History of the Second World War” →

Christmas Lessons from California

victorhanson

by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

 

Nature this year is predictably not cooperating with California.

 

Rarely has such a naturally rich and scenic region become so mismanaged by so many creative and well-intentioned people.

 

In California, Yuletide rush hours are apparently the perfect time for state workers to shut down major freeways to make long-overdue repairs to the ancient pavement. Last week, I saw thousands of cars stuck in a road-construction zone that was juxtaposed with a huge concrete (but only quarter-built) high-speed-rail overpass nearby.

 

The multibillion-dollar high-speed-rail project, stalled and way over budget, eventually may be completed in a decade or two. But for now, California needs good old-fashioned roads that don’t disrupt holiday shopping — before it starts futuristic projects it cannot fully fund.

 

California’s steep new gasoline tax — one of the highest in the nation — has not even fully kicked in, and yet the cash-strapped state is already complaining that the anticipated additional revenue will be too little.
Continue reading “Christmas Lessons from California” →

The Internet Executioner

victorhanson
by Victor Davis Hanson
Defining Ideas

Image credit: Barbara Kelley

 

In the pre-Internet age, newspaper and television reporters would need clearance from their nosy managing editors to investigate a breaking scandal or firing. Additional journalists then would go to work uncovering facts and details. There were, to be sure, feeding frenzies and misinformation in the zeal to get a scoop or ensure an exclusive story. But the pursuit of a scandal was braked by both professional fears about the consequences of shoddy or biased reporting, and the absence of instantaneous electronic messaging and posting.

Suggestions of wrongdoing would be digested, debated, and disseminated for days or weeks within a larger cycle of warring op-ed columns and radio and television debate and commentary. In this often deliberate process, federal or local district attorneys and/or a grand jury, then, could monitor the public story, while conducting preliminary investigations to determine whether a criminal indictment was necessary. A court trial might follow.

Not now. The Internet and social media have either compressed—or pruned away entirely—such adjudication, which once ensured to the accused some presumption of innocence and constitutional due process. Well-meant and needed efforts—from calling to account sexual harassers to stopping Russian interference in U.S. politics to questioning the commemoration of Confederate-era racist slave-holders—can accelerate quickly out of control to the point where rumor, innuendo, or frenzy replace reason, fact, and fair adjudication. How ironic—or rather predictable—it is that the more rapid the transmission of a story, the more likely it is to be inaccurate or untrue. Continue reading “The Internet Executioner” →

victorhanson

From Angry Reader Jeffrey Rowland

So…after one year in office, Trump’s biggest (AND ONLY!) accomplishment is that he is King of Twitter? You must be very proud. By the way, how’s that Trumpcare thing workin’ out for ya?

 Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

 Idiot. Moron. Buffoon. Simpleton. Test Tube Baby!

______________________________________________________________________________

Dear Angry Reader Jeffrey Rowland,

You have many of the characteristics of the classic unhinged angry reader: the proverbial capital letters, the exclamation mark, the personal slurs, and the slang, but deserve credit for a new wrinkle—the onomatopoetic scream. So you score a 10 on the Angry Reader scale of inanity. Did you read the essay or simply write to slur? The defeat of ISIS, the new NSS document, a new principled realism policy promulgated by superb foreign policy appointments like Mattis and McMaster, coupled with tax reform, deregulation, record energy production, 4% fourth quarter GDP growth, record stock market levels, as well as increased consumer and business confidence, and new lows in unemployment, in some cases record low minority unemployment—all point to undeniable accomplishment (in addition to superb judicial appointments and radical drops in illegal crossings of the southern border).

A final suggestion: even slurs and smears deserver coherence; what does “test tube baby” as a finale to “idiot,” “moron,” “buffoon,” and “simpleton” actually mean?

Victor Hanson

victorhanson

From An Angry Reader:

Dear Mr. Hanson,

I just finished your article about Trump’s tweets and it has moved me to ask a question. I was wondering if quite possibly, you’ve lost your mind? You write as if his tweets are harmless and of no consequence when they have caused the North Korean situation to become even more alarming. Furthermore, he insults people left and right for nothing more than disagreeing with him. His actions have not only caused hatred and division in the country but have fractured the Republican party.

 Then there is the tax plan. In the past when corporations have benefited it has rarely been passed down to the working people and the division between the top earners and the average person has gotten wider over the years. Also, as a center-right, I’ve always believed that you need regulations, but the minimum necessary to do the job, not get rid of them completely. So, congratulations, you and the people that feel as you do have convinced me to do what George Will did and declare myself an independent.

 Good work,

Benjamin Hudgins

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Dear Angry Reader Benjamin Hudgins,

What column are your reading?

I think being an Independent is wise. Congratulations!

The whole point of the essay was to point out that tweeting is a powerful tool, often in Trump’s hands effective, but also volatile and now often counter-productive. Do you really believe that in 2017 knowing that the North Koreans for some time have had thermonuclear weapons and the ability to send them into the U.S., and taking all sorts of efforts to stop them, is more dangerous than from 2009-16 simply ignoring what they were doing, or, in the words of former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, believing we could live with North Korean nuclear missiles pointed at us—the official position apparently of the Obama administration? I will prefer loud deterrence any day to judicious appeasement.

Trump certainly is a divider, but he is also a follower—in this case an adherent to “get in their faces,” “punish our enemies,” and “take a gun to a knife fight” us/them rhetoric of Barack “you didn’t earn that!” Obama, whose executive orders became a model for Trump as well as his commentaries on ongoing court cases. Continue reading →

Is Trump an Island?

victorhanson

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

 

If Trump would let his deeds speak for themselves, he would quiet his enemies far more than he does with Twitter broadsides.

No man is an island entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main . . .

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

— John Donne

The pathological hatred of Donald Trump — from impeachment votes to the emoluments-clause suits to assassination chic to talk of invoking 25th Amendment to sexual-harassment writs — would grind down almost any 71-year-old man. Trump may be ego-driven and have a proverbially thin skin, but even a rhino would finally chafe under the 24/7 media detestation of his person, his family, and his presidency.

Someday soon now, we will look back at the Russian-collusion psychodrama, the strange transference of his transition team’s emails to Robert Mueller, the Clinton role in the Steele-Fusion GPS dossier, the destruction of journalistic integrity, and the slant of the Mueller investigation team and appreciate that we were living through an effort to swing the 2016 election and, failing that, a veritable slow-motion effort to remove an elected presidency.

The ubiquitous Lisa Bloom, we learn, was attempting to arrange payments for, or at least merchandise the testimonies of, supposed Trump harassment victims in the waning days of the 2016 campaign. Both liberal and conservative surveys of the media reveal that at least 90 percent of Trump coverage has been negative. Those who once held positions now held by Trump disown them; what they used to oppose, they now embrace — the only constant being whatever Trump is against, they are for.

Fake news will not stop. The rewards among peers and the media profession for getting a whack to Trump are felt worth the costs of largely betraying the cannons of journalism. A generation ago, a Brian Ross — twice now caught trafficking in untruths — would have been through as a journalist. Today, he is merely suspended as a temporary casualty in the noble war against Trump evil. Continue reading “Is Trump an Island?” →

victorhanson

From An Angry Reader:

Victor David Hanson, you’d sweep the table. Your post-tweet Presidency column entry tops all possible contenders in its unique blend of so-bad-its-good upending suspension of logic and unearned laudatory excess that the academy is bereft of adequate means of expression to honor its achievements.

 Perhaps its heaps and heaps of praises could be stacked in a pyre with the rest of your journalistic output in the same vein, your reputation placed on top, and the whole saccharine malodorous pile set ablaze.

That guy with your name who writes those sober and sane books and historical studies must daily be abashed at being confused for you.

 Paul Freedman

Vienna, VA

___________________________________________

Dear Angry Reader Paul Freedman,

 

Davis not David—not a good start. Whoa—slow down: your vocabulary and syntax of outrage have stampeded.

To write an effective Angry Reader letter, you must be specific and give examples, rather than start out with “you’d sweep the table” boilerplate. What then follows is mostly generic hyperbole without references or examples.

I made a simple argument: 1) Trump so far had defied expert opinion in using Twitter, sometimes crudely, for political advantage; 2) But after 10 months in office he has achievements (good economy, recalibrated foreign policy, likely tax reform, good appointments [especially judicial], soaring energy production, and deregulation; 3) Consequently, while Twitter is effective in reaching millions to convey his messages, he need not joust one-on-one with individual journalists and celebrities, but rather let his record and improving economy speak for itself and not be impaired by rhetoric distractions. Continue reading →

The War of Wars Analyzed to the Third Decimal Place

victorhanson

Santa’s Book Bag

By Larry Thornberry // The American Spectator

A magnificent contribution from Victor Davis Hanson.

The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won
By Victor Davis Hanson
(Basic Books, 652 pages, $40)

Yes, Virginia, after thousands of books, lectures, debates, veteran memoirs, and documentaries, there is still something to say about World War II that advances our knowledge of that tragic, deadly and totally unnecessary world conflagration that claimed 65 million lives and changed the shape of the world. Military historian and Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson says it in his huge, dense, and important new book.

As I struggle in my office to capture Hanson’s analytical tour de force in review, I can see the shelf full of books on World War II that I’ve read over the decades. After reading Wars, I believe I have a firmer grasp of the big picture — very big picture indeed — of how this conflict began, the various tortuous paths it took, and how it resolved the way it did than after digesting all of these other volumes. Reviewers are sometimes over-quick to label a book essential. For readers who wish to fully understand World War II, this book is.

Readers will have to set aside some time to get through Wars. There is meat on every one of the 529 pages of text, and it can be thought-provoking. This is not a book to rush through. If you plan to read this one on an airline flight, it better be a long one. But for all the weight, length, and relentless analysis of Wars, the reader’s job is made easier by Hanson’s clear and persuasive prose. Continue reading “The War of Wars Analyzed to the Third Decimal Place” →

Disruptive Politics in the Trump Era: Yuval Levin or Victor Davis Hanson?

victorhanson

By | December 15, 2017
American Greatness

The crucial question for the American Right today, as it has been for at least 60 years, is: What is the nature of its confrontation with modern liberalism?

Is it a policy argument over how to achieve the common goals of liberal democracy? Are we working to expand liberty, equality, and prosperity for all citizens? Do we share the same principles with American liberals but differ with them  over policy and how best to implement those principles? Is it really,  as  Yuval Levin has said, “a coherent debate between left and right forms of liberalism”?

Or is this conflict a much deeper existential struggle over the very nature of the American “regime” itself—its principles, values, institutions, mores, culture, education, citizenship, and “way of life”? Is it, as Victor Davis Hanson has put it, that we are in a “larger existential war for the soul of America”?

I would argue that Hanson is essentially correct: We are in the middle of a “regime” struggle. Continue reading “Disruptive Politics in the Trump Era: Yuval Levin or Victor Davis Hanson?” →

victorhanson

From An Angry Reader:

 

It’s a good thing I’m 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) away from you.

 

You can take that any way you want.

 

Daniel Weir

Washington, DC

 

___________________________________________

 

Dear Angry Reader Daniel Weir,

 

Making personal threats against someone with whom you disagree is not good for the soul.

 

Victor Hanson

Selma, CA

 

___________________________________________

%d bloggers like this: